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How can we bridge the gap between home and school literacies?

When I think back on this semester, with regards to helping to bridge the gap between primary and secondary discourse I am somewhat at a loss for a concrete answer. I think the best way to help is to have an open-mind and positive attitude about different discourses and literacies. In addition to being open-minded and accepting, it is crucial that teachers arm themselves with knowledge about language acquisition and literacy. Many of the terms we learned this semester were completely foreign to me, such as: morphology, pragmatics, and semantics. Learning what these words mean and how they relate to students’ learning have been really helpful. When students are learning a new language often they refer to the rules of their primary language—when teachers know where these errors are coming from it becomes somewhat easier to approach students and begin to work with them on making changes.

 In my student teaching placement I had several students whose primary discourse was Spanish and many of them were not in ESL classrooms. In fact, many of their teachers did not even speak Spanish; they had to rely on the limited knowledge they had of English. I was greatly confused and frankly disturbed that these students were not given addition help to bridge the gap between their home and school literacies. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to discover that some of the students who were former ELLs, were very patient and helpful with their peers who were struggling with English. While this was extremely inspiring to see I felt helpless in certain circumstances. I have a very limited knowledge of Spanish (although now I hope to practice it actively in order to become proficient) and often what I did know was not necessarily what was needed to effectively communicate with my students. It was also troubling when they would hand in written assignments that were difficult to understand because there were too many grammatical issues. When I attempted to address this issue with my co-operating teacher and asked if we could incorporate some lessons or workshops for writing (that would ultimately benefit the entire class) he claimed that the students should have already learned this in early middle school and that it was not his responsibility to spend class time on it.

 The attitude that my cooperating teacher took towards grammar instruction is not something I agree with. I think that grammar instruction in schools has been greatly downsized and overlooked. Because of this students are not taught the rules of standard English—rules that they will be held accountable to know and use in all of their academic and formal writing. This does not seem at all fair to me. I stated earlier that it is important for teachers to inform themselves as much as possible about language and literacy, I think it is equally important that students learn the standards they will be held to. I think that incorporating assignments that encourage them to write as they speak (even in another language) along with assignments that ask them to use standard English is a good way to bridge the gap. I think students should be allowed to honor and practice their primary discourse in writing, however I also think it is necessary for them to learn how to write and communicate in standard English because they will need it in continuing education and in their professional lives. A powerful incentive to help them bridge the gap is to create writing assignments that are grounded in “real life” or have a “real” audience, or some kind of purpose that they can understand to have real value (beyond a grade for class). Using both their primary discourse and incorporating secondary discourses teaches the students code switching which is another useful tool that helps identify what discourses are appropriate to communicate in various scenarios. When we tried code-switching in class, and then witnessed students trying the same activity it was evidence of why this activity is worthwhile. I am not entirely sure if these activities and strategies will completely bridge the gap for students, but I do think they are steps in the right direction.